Brendan Shanahan is driving west on Lake Shore Blvd., talking of his upbringing, his family, his life-long friends, pointing out the sights that mattered most then and now.

Then he stops in Mimico, a place that looks like time has stopped.

He points to the swimming pool at Ourland Park, the field named for Angelo Sacco, shows me where his name remains in chalk on certain buildings. And he stops at the almost-hidden piece of land alongside St. Leo's Catholic School where Shanahan first learned to fight.

"I used to think it was so much bigger than this," Shanahan says, stopping the car and parking at the side of the road.

"This was a scrappy neighbourhood. When you wanted to fight, you wouldn't say, 'You wanna go?' You would just say two words: 'Gym wall.' And, after school, someone would meet you there. That's how it worked."

Shanahan understood battling almost from birth as the youngest of four brothers born to Donal and Rosaleen. At the age of five, he shared a room with his 16-year-old brother.

The house was a game waiting to be played -- a wrestling match, road hockey, hide-and-seek, kick the can, lacrosse, football. Whatever it was, Shanahan wanted to play, needed to compete.

This is where a Hall of Famer comes from. This is how a kid who believes he was "never the best player on any team I've ever played on -- pro, junior or minor hockey," receives the highest recognition in his sport come Monday night.

He will be at the Hockey Hall of Fame with his 80-year-old hero -- his mother -- along with his wife and children, his brothers, their families and his oldest friends. Everyone but his father, a victim of early Alzheimer's, gone now for more than half of his life. He will be missed and certainly mentioned.

They used to get up together for the early morning practices, Don the firefighter and his youngest son. The other three kids, they all travelled to hockey together.

But by the time Brendan played, it was mostly him and his dad.

"I never saw my father skate, never knew if he had a pair of skates," says Shanahan.

"He was an Irish immigrant, came to Canada at 18. He came to love hockey. When I was little, I'd go to the rink with my brothers and hang around. At that time, organized hockey started at about age seven. I think I was four years old when the organizers of the Long Branch House League said to my father: 'Why doesn't he play?'

"My dad said I was too young. They said I was big enough, so they put me in a few years early.

"I was so bad that first year that when the buzzers went to change lines, the referees would pick me up and carry me to the bench. It sped up the game. The next year I got better ..."

Shanahan progressed from house league to the Etobicoke Hockey Association and then to Mississauga Reps of what was then the MTHL. There was even a short stint with the Toronto Young Nats, a confusing year for a young man not certain of what was happening to his father.

They would drive to the rink and sometimes dad would get confused, nervous and anxious. Occasionally, they got lost. They had to return to Mississauga.

"I knew my father was going through something, but I didn't really understand what it was," he says. "When I went to play junior in London, every time I came home he was a little different, a little more gone."

Donal was well enough physically to accompany Shanahan to the 1987 NHL draft, where his son was selected second overall.

"If you saw him, you wouldn't think there was anything wrong with him," Shanahan says. "But if you talked to him, you would know."

Three years later, after Shanahan's third season in New Jersey, Donal Shanahan was gone.

His funeral was at the church where Brendan had his first communion, just a few blocks from their home.

Everything was and is neighbourhood with Shanahan. His mom still lives in the same Mimico home. His name remains high on the bricks in chalk. His oldest brother lives just a few blocks away.

"If there's a time (in my speech) that I might get emotional, it may be this," Shanahan says. "My whole career happened without him, really. Even when he was still alive, he wasn't really there."

He wasn't there for the 50-goal seasons in St. Louis, the trades for Chris Pronger and Paul Coffey and the compensation for Scott Stevens, the Stanley Cups in Detroit. In 21 years in the NHL, Shanahan scored more than 50 twice, 40 four times, 30 six times, 20 seven times. In 17 of those years, he had 100 or more penalty minutes.

And still he's never really thought of himself as a goal scorer.

"We won the Quebec Peewee tournament with a really strong team and three guys from that team -- me, Jason Woolley and Bryan Marchment -- all played in the NHL. And if you picked the top five players on that team, none of us would been mentioned.

"I would have thought Steve Glugosh or David D'Amico or David Humphries, our goalie, would have been the guys going to the NHL. To be honest, I never thought about being a pro hockey player. It was never on my radar.

"I just assumed I was going to play hockey like my brothers. I'd go to college somewhere. I didn't even think I'd play college hockey. I figured I'd end up playing for the Irish Canadians in some rec league."

The times were so different then. Shanahan played high-school football at Michael Power, ran track, was never considered among the jocks in school, and didn't live anything of the consumed hockey life that young prospects lead today.

"My high school friends -- and they're still my closest friends today -- were as shocked and surprised by my career as I was. I know they've enjoyed the things I've been able to share with them. I also know if I hadn't played one day in the NHL, they'd still be my friends. We used to be called the Mod Squad. Not one of us had a parent who was born in Canada. We would call each other on the phone and wind up speaking to a parent who either didn't speak English or spoke English, but you couldn't understand them.

"Looking back, I was just one of the guys. I didn't think about pro hockey. I just assumed there was a whole class of players somewhere that looked like Darryl Sittler and Gilbert Perreault and Guy Lafleur that were 16 years old. And I wasn't one of them."

Shanahan began to think differently when he got to the London Knights.

For some reason, each time he moved up a level, his quality of play got better, his game more developed.

"I was more suited for bantam than minor bantam, more suited for midget than minor midget, more suited for the NHL than I was for junior. It's something I've not always been able to explain."

In London, though, he was terribly homesick.

"Most homesick guy they've ever seen," he says.

It didn't help when he was pulled out of school one day and informed that Randy Giesecke, who pushed him harder than any minor-hockey coach he had played for, and left a lasting influence, had been murdered.

If he ever he wanted to go home and be around family, that was the time. But one trait evident throughout Shanahan's career: He learned to battle, to never stop competing.

He credits Giesecke and former teammates Doug Sulliman and Brett Hull with helping him advance his game and his ability to score goals.

"I think it's a complete copout that you can't learn or be taught how to score at the NHL level," Shanahan says. "I hear coaches say all the time that you can teach defence, but you can't teach offence. I don't buy that. I'm an example of the opposite. I worked on my shot. I was a student of the game. I watched what Hull did and learned from that."

He was a rookie in New Jersey in Lou Lamoriello's first year as GM with the Devils. He wound up in St. Louis with Mike Keenan, in Detroit with Scotty Bowman.

But maybe even then he knew management was in his future.

"I played for some great GMs. To start out with Lou, have Ron Caron, Jimmy Rutherford, Glen Sather and Kenny Holland, I used to study them, watch what they did. I almost learned more from my general managers than I did from my coaches."

Only 12 players in NHL history have scored more goals. Shanahan is the tenth from that list to get the call.

The other two -- Teemu Selanne and Jaromir Jagr -- will join him in the future. He has more NHL goals than Joe Sakic or Bobby Hull, Mike Bossy or Lafleur, Rocket Richard or Stan Mikita.

You mention that and in the car, driving away from Mimico, Shanahan blushes.

He says, "The career I was able to have outdistances my ability. I know that."

Brendan Shanahan's road to the Hockey Hall of Fame started in Mimico

Brendan Shanahan is driving west on Lake Shore Blvd., talking of his upbringing, his family, his life-long friends, pointing out the sights that mattered most then and now.

Then he stops in Mimico, a place that looks like time has stopped.

He points to the swimming pool at Ourland Park, the field named for Angelo Sacco, shows me where his name remains in chalk on certain buildings. And he stops at the almost hidden piece of land alongside St. Leo's Catholic School, where Shanahan first learned to fight.

"I used to think it was so much bigger than this," Shanahan says, stopping the car and parking at the side of the road.

"This was a scrappy neighbourhood. When you wanted to fight, you wouldn't say, 'You wanna go?' You would just saw two words: 'Gym wall.' And, after school, someone would meet you there. That's how it worked."

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